In a related art, Digital Rights Management (DRM) indicates a technology and a service which prevents an unauthorized utilization of a digital content and thereby protects revenues and rights of those concerned with copyrights.
Specifically, DRM indicates a technology which can securely protect revenues and rights of a content provider, prevent illegal copies of a content, and also can support generation of the content, distribution thereof, management thereof, and the like, such as a billing service, a payment, and the like. In this instance, DRM includes a DRM technology enabling only an authorized user to utilize a content and pay a fee, a software and security technology for approving and executing playback of copyrighted content, a billing/payment technology, and the like. Napster, a music download service provider, initially employed DRM to protect MP3 copyrights in the year 2001. Also, as online contents start being paid for and thereby become an important technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States published DRM as one of ten future key information technologies.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a method of performing DRM according to a conventional art. As shown in FIG. 1, a DRM system 101 connects with a provider (CP/ISP) 103 providing a content 102 and a payment system 104, for example, a payment gateway, and thereby provides the content 102. Also, the DRM system 101 encrypts the content 102 and transmits the encrypted content 102 to a user terminal 105.
To play the encrypted content 102, a browser provided from the provider 103 must be installed in the user terminal 105. In this instance, the browser performs functions, such as prevention of an illegal copy, restriction on a number of plays, restriction on a secondary distribution of the content 102 via the user terminal 105, and the like.
However, in the conventional art, DRM may never acquire information about where and how many times digital contents, such as moving pictures, music contents, advertisements, and the like, have been played. Even when a program is installed in a corresponding digital content to solve the above problem, file size of the digital content may be increased. Also, digital content quality may be deteriorated.
Also, in the conventional art, DRM is dependent on a universal player to play a digital content and thus the digital content may not be played in the universal player depending upon installation of a program as described above.
Also, when providing an advertisement in a digital content, an existing advertisement providing method generally depends on a form of a moving picture format and the universal player. Accordingly, an advertiser may neither arbitrarily provide the advertisement in the digital content nor track a distribution level of the advertisement.